A) Africa is not "starving", this year 40 million Africans will face "food insecurity". 40 million out of a population of over a billion. It's a bit of a generalization to say that "Africans are starving".

B) Africa is extremely diverse and massive. There were rich kingdoms and empires, such as Dahomey, Kongo, or Mali, throughout African history and directly before European imperialism. On the west coast there were many cities, such as Mombasa and Zanzibar, that grew wealthy through the Indian Ocean trade. Before colonization, there was already European trade in Africa. This trade made states such as Dahomey and Ashanti very wealthy.

On the other hand, there were plenty of relatively primitive tribes all across the continent, and just like Europe or Asia, there was likely plenty of poverty, disease, and war all over the continent.

C) It is difficult to do research into pre-colonial Africa because there aren't many written records but some research seems to indicate that pre-colonial African society was better equipped to deal with "climatic stress"(aka famines and climate change) that has caused problems in modern states. Also worth noting that famines are often man made, and the famous Ethiopian famine might actually have been more of a genocide (by Africans) than a famine.

Europeans are responsible for many of Africa's problems though. They drew the borders of modern countries with total disregard for the different ethnic groups that lived there. The goal of colonialism was to extract resources from Africa, so essentially Europeans took huge amounts of wealth out of Africa. This meant that independent African countries wouldn't have access to that wealth, which technically made them poorer. Even after colonialism ended, foreign powers continued to interfere in African politics; contributing to the rise of many dictators such as Mobutu in Congo and Idi Amin in Uganda.(this is all mentioned in the article before) In fact, after Congo declared independence, Belgium backed a separatist movement in one of the most resource-rich areas of the country, hoping to install a government that would continue to allow foreign companies to exploit African resources.

It is difficult to know how "poor" Africa was before colonialism, since that was back in the 18th and 19th centuries, when most of the world was poor, however European colonialism certainly had a negative impact on African development in general.

Africa is the second-largest continent on earth. You may want to specify which part of Africa you're interested in.